The account rapidly tweeted a series of messages designed to induce panic. One such tweet read: “USS George Washington damaged, US navy now engaged in active combat against Chinese vessels in South China sea.” Another fraudulently reported that “Federal Reserve head Yellen announces bail-in in emergency meeting, rumored negative rate to be set at 4pm EST today.” The same tweets also appeared on the Twitter account for the UPI wire service.

The tweets were quickly deleted from The New York Post‘s account, but not before they received multiple retweets. UPI’s Twitter profile still seems suspect.

One apt reaction noted that this perfectly illustrates the challenge of exclusively following news disseminated online:

We’ll report back as more develops. And hopefully not with messages about how the Pope has announced World War III.